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126 THINKS AND THINGS
the example of this man who worked constantly for the betterment of those about him. As the Sanscrit poem has it:
He only does not live in vain
Who all the means within his reach
Employs — his wealth, his thought, his speech —
To advance the weal of other men.
Filth in literature, fictional or dramatic, seldom pays, for which let us all be truly thankful. A certain British producer of comedy films put out a burlesque on Mrs. Elinor Glyn's novel, " Three Weeks, " — a story which, it will be remembered, had most of the " broadness" of the " Decameron" with none of Boccaccio's artistic literary methods. The picture, called "Pimple's Three Weeks — Without the Option, " was released in England following the showing in London of the New York-made feature-picture founded on Mrs. Glyn's book. To say that Mrs. Glyn was " peeved" is putting it mildly. She at once instituted a suit for damages, etc., and attempted to have the burlesque production " put out of business. " Mrs. Glyn's claim has been finally disposed of in Chancery Court by Judge Younger, who handed out some good, plain truths about "red light" novels and pictures. "In his decision," remarks the Moving Picture World's London correspondent, "the judge said, 'the novel, which was published in 1907, was fortunate enough to be condemned by all reviewers and banned by all libraries, and to give it novelty its episodes were absurd. The film burlesque is frankly farcical and vulgar to an almost inconceivable degree. The episodes in the book are grossly immoral, with a tendency to elaborate incidents of adultery and intrigue and, in my opinion, copyright cannot exist in works so grossly immoral as this.' The action, which is not without its moral to aspiring producers of literary notorieties, was therefore dismissed." The unkind though well-deserved criticisms which are being handed out to some recently produced plays, the closing, "on the road," of other questionable dramatic attractions, the unvarnished critical slams handed out to salacious films by most of the reviewers, and the fact that some of the magazines which had turned to a policy of "frankness" have gone back to their old policy of clean, though out-of-the-ordinary stories, would seem to indicate that today plays and books on the order of "Three Weeks" have almost as good a chance, as Channing Pollock recently remarked, "as a dog with tallow legs chasing an asbestos cat through Hades."
Doubtless the producing firms have their own good and substantial reasons for putting on adaptations of well-known novels and plays and giving them, in their screen forms, entirely new names, but I, for one, cannot see the advisability of it. I am very fond of Robert Hichens' novel, "The Garden of Allah," and would like to see a really well-made adaptation of it, but unless the fact of the alteration in the title were made plain on the announcements shown in front of the theatres, or in the trade papers, I would probably never go to see such an adaptation if it were produced under the title of "The Lure of